I spent the end of my spring and the beginning of my summer turning my backyard into a parking lot to test the best robot lawn mowers. In the process of doing that, I learned a lot about their benefits and their shortfalls. One of the biggest lessons was that, like most forms of automation, they can be a real pain to set up initially, but once they're ready to go, they save you a ton of effort and time compared with regular electric lawn mowers.
I didn't expect that initial annoyance going into that project, but I think it's important to document those pains so you can avoid them in the future. Here are some of the lessons I learned about the obstacles you'll have to overcome if you decide to pull the trigger on a robot lawnmower.
Way more wires than I expected
The wires running through my yard for the robot lawn mower. It's not the most attractive sight. Adam Doud
The 800-pound gorilla in the room for robot mowers comes in the instructions that every mower company sends along with the robot. First, there are a ton of wires. You might need to run power to the base station or to the RTK beacon or both. If you’re unfamiliar, RTK stands for Real-Time Kinematic, a beacon that corrects a mower's coordinates to improve accuracy.
The mower companies tell you not to place the mower within 7 feet of a building or under a tree. They also tell you not to run wires through the grass. But if you're not supposed to place the base station under a tree or within 7 feet of a wall, where exactly are these wires supposed to go?
I also ran into an issue where an animal chewed through a wire to an RTK station, and I had to drive 70 minutes (one way) to a service center to get it repaired. You'll want to protect your wires where you can. Burying them is one way of doing this. Since I had to run them around a garden, I ran them through pool noodles. It's crude, but effective.
I had to use a pool noodle to hide the wires. It's not attractive, but it works. Adam Doud
Not all yards will work well
My backyard is almost entirely covered by a large tree, so it was difficult to find an appropriate installation space. Ultimately, despite instructions to the contrary, I had to line the mowers up next to my house. Only the Yarbo Lawn Mower and Airseekers Tron couldn't handle that; the rest were all fine.
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